whidbey

Academic Economists vs. Paulson

As a retired academic I assure you that this tiresome set of comments can be safely as nitpicking. The man is business trying to deal with Congress which is utterly impossible, so he must let the children paint the bailout many colors and put bows and ribbons on it, if he wants to get it through. What most of us are missing is that is some urgency in his efforts since he knows things we can only guess at, like several more banks are bleeding internally and need transfusions before their demises. I suspect the sudden taste for truth is driven by their discovery that this crisis has spread overseas, and outside the financial sector. Shocking they did not guess that was going to happen, but look at who they are, just ordinary men who have never taken broad strokes until recently. The academics and corporate officers are poor field generals and worse leaders, so naturally they are getting bad press and lots of heckles from their former colleagues.
The bad mouthing should be ignored, but not the central question: what doe those two know that we do not. Think the worse and I bet you will be short of the truth.